Amir Khazand (AK)
Interviewer
Leor Hakimi (LH)
Interviewer
Ohan Kilislian (OK)
Sub Interviewer
Francis Masquat (FM)
Veteran of Korean War
Interviewee
May, 14, 2013
at 15411 Victory Blvd.
Van Nuys California
Amir Khazand: Hi I am Amir and I'm here with Leor, Kristina, and Ohan and we would really like to thank you for coming here today, to do this interview, I'm here with Francis. And we are going to start with some simple questions and then get on to a little more specific questions. So first would question would be …where were you born and raised in?
Francis Masquat: I was born in Kansas on an Indian reservation, Potawatomi Indian reservation, and I went to Indian schools all my long young life and later on when I was in the army I took a test for going to West Point, I passed it, but I ain’t got no friends you know, so if you want to go to West Point you got to have a senator or somebody that will sponsor you so I had to go to VMI which is Virginia Military Institute. I got a degree for electrical engineering. I turned out in fifty four.
A.K: So what age were you when you went to the Korean War?
F.M: I was sixteen when I was enlisted, but I was seventeen when I was in Korea.
A.K: Okay and why did you enlist in the Korean War?
F.M: Because there was nothing else to do because you know because they're not going to give a young kid a job back in those days you had to [pause] you worked a part time at a service station and that's was it or they didn't have Kmart or all that back then [laughs] [unclear] but I did work in a supermarket and that they called super markets.
A.K: Okay so what did your family think when you told them you are going to war?
F.M: They didn't even know until it happened yeah, so when the Korean war broke out I just went directly to Japan, I was stationary in occupation and I went directly to south Korea . So my regiment went over, we had no artillery or nothing and no matter what we were always hands down for quite a while you know we didn't. Not much we could do you know yea.
A.K: Yes so which service branch did you join?
F.M: Army, I was a medic
A.K: Medic?
F.M: Yes
A.K & F.M: [unclear]
F.M: I was a medic in in infantry, it’s a pretty hard job, all the wounded to take care of. I had 22 wounded in one day and I was only one to take care of them. Every time a different wound you can imagine. What I hated was a head shots. When a fellow gets a head shot its strange, they look at you, smile, they don’t realize what’s happen to them. Yea I don’t know why it’s that way, but it is.
A.K: Okay, so let’s go on to something else. What was the most memorable experience during the Korean War?
F.M: It mattered…[laughs] In Korea I went from Gunsan all the way up to the yellow river, which is the whole distance. Yea so…
A.K: Okay [Pause]
L.H: Did you use a weapon?
F.M: Um Medic’s don’t really use the weapons but we had to carry them because, I carried a 45 and that was for my own protection because those Koreans were very very mean people.
L.H: Did you ever use it on someone?
F.M: [unclear] when you shoot a guy you can’t sleep. I don’t care who he is, it works on you.
L.H: Yeah. Um is there something that you took with for good luck or anything?
F.M: pardon me?
L.H: Did you take anything with you for good luck?
F.M: No, I just kept my head down. [laughs]
L.H: Did you make friends in the service?
F.M: That’s kind of hard to do, because they may be here today and gone tomorrow. Yeah I lost a lot of friends over there.
A.K: I’m sorry
L.H: How did the public react when you returned home?
F.M: When I come home?
L.H: Yes when you came home.
F.M: It was like [pause] world war two was over; you were part of that so it was they didn’t really recognize you to much. I remember the Red Cross was there and they passed them out, donuts, and coffee, and uh that about all we got when we got off the ship. I went over on cheap transport and come back on a cheap transport.
L.H: Did you keep in touch with uh your friends after like friends in the service?
F.M: I did at first but later on no. Practically all the guys I know are gone . I just turned 80 in December.
L.H: Was it hard adjusting back to the regular life when you came back home?
F.M: Not really.
L.H: Not really?
F.M: No, I didn’t think about it to much, a lot of guys do, but I don’t.
A.K: When you came back home did you uh, like what was your job what did you start to do?
F.M: I was going to school that’s where I told you I am
A.K: Oh Okay
F.M: Yeah
A.K: And then after, after school?
F.M: Pardon
A.K: After school, after you finished your school where were you (or what did you do?)
F.M: Well I worked over seas for about 31 years. Yeah
A.K: Wow
F.M: Everything from Saudi Arabian, South America, Asia and everywhere
A.K: everywhere?
F.M: Yeah
L.H: Did you ever get rewarded for your service?
F.M: You get some awards, you get a purple heart once in chronology. You don’t really want one of them you know, but you know if you get nicked. Ugghhh brown stars and -
L.H: Do you think America’s action to follow the containment policy was justified in military actions?
F.M: That’s a hard one, and I, I’m not really into thinking what America should be doing because the big shots take care of that. Well you know in war, you know who the bigger winner is?
A.K: No
F.M: The banks
L.H: The bank?
F.M: Sure
A.K: oh
F.M: All those rich people. The soldiers don’t get anything when hurt and so think about it. Right now those sellers are over in the Middle East and all over. Why are they there? We shouldn’t be fighting those people. I don’t think so, and I don’t like the idea of it, but there’s nothing I can do.
L.H: How did your service and experiences affect your life?
F.M: I really didn’t have much of a of a problem, but it affected my life. I, I, the only thing I do once in a while, I go to a reunion.
A.K: Yes
F.M: And that’s about once every 5 years I go.
A.K: And how did that go?
F.M: Well every time you go there’s always less and less and right now I, if I go there’s probably not more then 30 people in the whole thing. When it first started, it was well over two-three hundred.
A.K: Mhmmm
F.M: Yea. But the guys are older to get to now.
L.H: Ummm,[Pause] Uhhhh Did you feel like it was a good war?
F.M: Korea?
A.K: Yes
F.M: I think we needed to stop em there yes, but me I wasn’t really thinking about it. I wasn’t thinking about war, I was just trying to do my job over there, but it’s a good thing that we stopped them there and because if we hadn’t I think they would have probably, you know, would have tried to take over there. They took, look at the North Koreans now. Their starving their people and to, and to take care of their army, to feed their army and you know. That’s not right. The children are all at least 3 inch shorter than the average person here and they weighed, I don’t know, quite a bit less. They’re not that healthy, yeah
A.K: Sorry. Through ugh, no sorry.
L.H: So throughout your experience in the Korean War did you believe that that the US shouldn’t have interfered in the first place, or do you think that the US-
F.M: In Korea I think so, in Vietnam No, no. I think we should have stayed out of that. Yeah this Korea was located in... we we stopped em there. If we hadn’t of stopped them there what would of they done.
A.K: turn everyone
F.M: It was kind of a mess, but we done the job, we stopped them. But if they of kept them coming, we don’t know what would have happened. It would have been a pretty big mess I think.
A.K: okay umm, how many in your infantry did you loose?
F.M: Ughhh, my platoon we had about 50.
A.K: Mhmmm
F.M: You got in the... ugh... in a raffle company. We had 4 medics and you had about 212 men, that’s your captain and officers and all.
A.K: Did you know most of them?
F.M: Not really. You don’t, it’s not like a friendship, they just, you just know they’re there, and you know I’m there and you take care of them if they get hurt. That’s all I was there for, but some of the DI’s they paid, they, they used to take care of me. Ummm if I was taking care of a wounded, they’d bring me my rations and I would, and so I could eat. Yea and they looked over me, protected me, and cared for me...getting hurt if they could.
A.K: Were you injured?
F.M: Ummm, about three different times, but nothing severe.
A.K: Would you like to go over one or two of those with us?
F.M: pardon?
A.K: Would you like to go over one or two of those injuries with us, how they went, what happened:
F.M: What?
A.K: The injuries
F.M: The injuries talk about it?
A.K: yes
F.M: Well I got there a bullet inside of my knee here [shows knee]. Yea I got a piece of shrapnel across my hand. I was dressing the guys head because he’d been head shot and ugh I was dressing him and uh our artillery round command up I don’t know like thirty/ forty feet away and the shrapnel come at me and just cut me from that little finger all the way back there, and ugh killed him because it went through his head.
L.H: Can you describe like a day in North Korea?
F.M: A day?
L.H: Like how was life, the daily life?
F.M: Well, everyday is different. You wake up and ugh kinda look around like make sure what’s really going on before you, you know, so that you don’t get hurt. And uh, like me I, I always kept a, an eye on my guy on my troops, and there were a lot of times where our other medics would be hurt shot up, killed and I had to take there place to. So I’ve had the whole rifle coming here one time, that was well, what was left of them was probably a hundred and ten.
A.K: So what was your main infantry men assigned to? Was it to go north or was it to do something else?
F.M: Well, ugh we did different things. Mainly what happens was, ugh, we would stay in position to back up the unit that was fighting and the next day we take there place. Maybe two days later it would be an offset and all that in here, and I remember going through Paing Yang and we, we would be he first cavalry went through there and they finished, we took over there. All I remember about Paing Yang was it was burning and all the fire, but later on when we went up to North Korea it was cold. A lot of my guys would freeze to death. Whenever they started to go to sleep they had to wake them up cuz if you didn’t; death, ugh when you are being frozed is a sweet way to go. Yea because you just fall asleep, you don’t feel the cold, you don’t feel anything. What you have to do, you have to keep shaking them and waking them up and yea, if you don’t you lose them. There’s a lot to this, I want people to understand and realize it’s not like the pacific where it’s just a warm day all the time. Over there we have real severe cold, and we had severe rain, mud, trucks could hardly move.
A.K: Umm what were some main North Korean battle tactics that they used against your position?
F.M: They were just real bad. We had an aid station, I think it was two doctors and there was probably three to four people that assisting when he was working on the tables these wounded and ugh they ugh, they had about probably twelve fifteen more fellows there and the North Koreans came through, they grabbed them all, tied their hands to a (something) wire and took them out and shot them, and killed them. Well that really made the guys mad, and so we went out and called those North Koreans and boogered them up really really bad. They, they understood what we were doing to them and yea. But you had to treat them the way they treated us, they understood that. If you tried to treat them nice it didn’t do any good, because if they got a chance to kill you they sure would. They were exceptionally mean.
A.K: What were some American tactics that you guys used?
F.M: What?
A.K: American tactics, like some type...
F.M: American tactics?
A.K: Yes
F.M: Umm we just used a, we just used (unclear), and we used a lot of artillery because if you don’t use the artillery you’re wasting your men because its not like; the marines is always, well we always thought they were dumb because all they wanted to do was go and get shot up you know where as Americans the army they wanted to just use their line of artillery and do their job and then go take care of them. [unclear]
A.K: So, I’m gonna go a little bit post war-ish. How were you reemployed back home, what was the system there?
F.M: They just called my name one day and said you going back to the states, ya. Its called rotation.
A.K: Which city did you go to?
F.M: What city?
A.K: yea, city/state.
F.M: I ugh caught a ship in puson, and I went on over o Japan and I don’t remember what town it was, but I got off there and then we caught another ship and come back to the states. It was ugh, I went over on the Shanks and I came back on the Breckony Bridge. (unclear) You know the army has got more ships than the navy, yes.
A.K: Well ugh, you went back home, back to your home city, home town, when you came back to the states.
F.M: when I cam back
A.K: yea
F.M: how were we treated and all
A.K: Umm sure, we’ll go with that.
F.M: You didn’t notice any difference, about the same as ugh you know. There was no band, and they weren’t witting on you marching down the street. That wasn’t, they didn’t have that.
A.K: coffee and donuts
F.M: coffee and donuts were right across, and all I wanted to do was catch a plane and go back to the city... for a while, which I did.
A.K: Umm did you have any, like I said, like you said before, any of your platoon members who suffered from major injuries as well that you saw either...?
F.M: All the time. They were, I got to say there were head shots. Now when you get a head shot that’s really bad, when you; people don’t know that brains do smell. They smell like suffer. Your brain doesn’t bleed too much, ut I’ve seen brain come out the eye, the ears, and guys choking on them in their throat. It’s not a pretty thing. [chuckle] Every medic has an experience so ugh....
A.K: Are you proud that you served as a medic, or would you prefer serving as something else.
F.M: I wouldn’t wanna be ..... I probably wouldn’t be here if (unclear) Because a medic you stay a little bit back behind, you dress these guys and ugh you know, you don’t have to get out there and shoot them up. I didn’t dare to carry a riffle. I carried a 45 that a lieutenant gave me, and tankers used to have the gun, the 45 around here, a holster, so that’s where I carried it. Ya
L.H: were there any major assignments that you did, or helped with?
F.M: the what?
L.H: Major assignments like umm, the diametric for anything like ugh
F.M: we?
A.K: battle wise
F.M: well, we fought in quite a few battles, but ugh what they done over there they didn’t say this is a battle, this is a battle or this is a battle. They had certain times while you were there and that particular time, that, that was when they order the battle start and it wasn’t, well you didn’t go out on the field, and it was just a time that you were there. Yea so it wasn’t anything special.
A.K: ugh can you describe, I mean the training process you went through to be a medic?
F.M: Ugh, when I got to Japan I was an infantry men and ugh I think it was around the first of February of 50 .They called me at one morning and there was six of us. They send the whole stock of us to medical school, well you know the army type of medical school. So I went there and I spent 10 weeks........ I was a medic that had to work for the infantry. I didn’t drive an litter jeep or anything. The one time I got hurt, they put me as an litter jeep driver, so that was better than walking ( laughs)
A.K: And ugh could you describe what that experience was?
F.M: well ugh, as a you go out into the field and you pick up the wounded and put them on litters, strap them all down and take them to the aid station.
O.K: I have a question, my name is Ohan, so I would like to ask you ugh, what was the, how do I say it, racial equality..... out here?
A.K: Was there like a major segregation policy?
F.M: yea there was. We had ugh the 24th infantry regiment, they were all blacks and they were in the 25th division, yea. Back in those days the army was segregated, but ugh sometimes I would go out and pick up some of them.
A.K: so you helped them too
F.M: yea, ugh, but I never, never had to serve a day in the army but I’m trying to think of this guy. He’s a big baseball player. I had him before I was discharged, I was they put a man MRTC which is medical replacement training center... (unclear) and Ugh, I had him. He’s a big time baseball player and I can’t remember his name, but you know that’s one of my experiences. But ugh yea that was my job to help train these guys before they went to Korea. You really can't train them for that they just have to experience it.
L.H: What was your most memorable day of North Korea?
F.M: Whats that?
L.H: What was your most memorable day like in North Korea?
F.M: I never really had a memorable day. Not that I can remember.
A.K: So what was one of the first injuries you had to fix basically?
F.M: One of the first ones I had to?
A.K: Yeah, the most traumatic.
F.M: Oh I think this guy got shot right through the mouth, lost his lower jaw came out back here and I dressed him up and sent him back to the aid station but when that happens it is awful because you cant stop the blood really and they're swallowing a lot of blood there's nothing back here you know, the {Unclear} there’s no muscle or anything so you just, there cotton... anyway there square cotton linen we used them for stopping bleeding and I decide to fill his mouth full of it to keep the blood from going down his stomach, there is my first one, I remember that one, but being a medic you have to improvise a lot ain’t no such thing as oh you can do this and I’ll take care of it, that don’t work I know when a guy back in those days there were no ball point pens we had regular fountain pens and if I can get a fountain pen Id use the top of it cut it off and keep it there that’s when I stick in their throat so they can breath sometimes when they get shot in the head because when you get a head shot a lot of times it makes the head swell and they cant breathe..like I say you gotta improvise a lot you know when I was in the service we didn’t have no zippers we thought they were funny things...that’s true because that would never last and when I saw my first ball point pen I said that wont last..coarse there were other things we didn’t thin would work but they did.
O.K: I have one more question did medics use a lot of morphine or one of those-
F.M: I carried a lot of morphine I had two boxes here, 2 boxes here and the first sergeant or the sergeant I would give him two or three boxes we didn’t wanna give the men that cause they what they would do was bust them things in a canteen cup and they'd go find themselves grape fruit juice and have themselves a nice cocktail..morphine cocktail.
A.K: And another question I wanna ask is when you finally finished serving what was your, kinda, view on North Koreans in general, living in the US as well.
F.M: I didn’t care much for em there was two Koreans the South Koreans and the North Koreans the South Korean basically was a good person North Koreans were mean you can have them cornered somewhere and if you weren’t paying attention they’d come out and try to shoot everybody and kill everybody they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t give up.
A.K: And did you witness a lot of UN actions taking place? The UN support American forces at all?
F: We had some Turks with us, had a French in there once, had some English, English used to drive me nuts because they played them bag pipes and walking down the road and giving our position away you know and I didn’t like that, you wanna say shuttup!...And you always know when you getting ready to do something that day when combat, when you gone have combat, because artillery starts never end up working always about four thirty, five O'clock. When that happens you say oh my god we're in for it.
A.K: So, we talk about artillery now did the North Korean forces use a lot of artillery on-
F.M: They used a lot, at the beginning they had the T-34 the Russian built tank and had two types of weapons on those tanks they had, on the older tanks they used a 76 millimeter then later on they had 85 millimeter and they, their tanks were very good they, you hit em they wouldn’t burn very well because they used it was kinda like a mixed diesel fuel where ours, gasoline, and that’s not good for tank.
LH: Was there a special memory about something that you worked on. Uh or your memory of someone you operated on?
FM: yeah uh quite a few fellows, it was always traumatic, and at the end of the day I hate to talk and say it lot of times you had blood you, had to find a stream and wash your clothes and uh yeah that was not an unusual thing. One night there was a tank there and this guy had been shot in the head, and his blood streamed out and this is an m 26 that’s the one that shot the big flat not flat but the front end is like this (shows hand signal) and they said take care of that guy he has been hit. So I tried to crawl up on that tank. It caught me three times. (unclear) couldn’t find that cause all that blood there it was slippery like it was lubricated and I couldn’t get up there in time. So I had to go around the side to get to him but it wasn’t worth it because he was gone. He was dead
AK: were a lot of soldiers in your platoon traumatized by gunfire or what they saw there?
FM: Every once in a while, if a guy went through several days of it then he was traumatized yeah, and you had to send him back. Because if you didn’t he would make it bad for the other guys so you had to get him out of there. He would start spooking other guys and everybody else you know. Like at night time he couldn’t sleep and he would scream hard and you had to hold him down. The best thing to do is to get rid of him and send him back and give him some sedating a doctor can sedate him or they will send you something up to sedate him with. I wouldn’t use morphine on anything like that. They had to send me something else and I never carried it with me because I had no right to use it till I was told to. You did have to take orders over there at times. I would wait till I got the order because I didn’t want to be responsible for anybody's problems.
O.H: One last thing it doesn’t have to do with you being a medic but did you notice the influence the Chinese had on the North Korean forces when you’re on battle field.
F.M: The Chinese stepped in late November fifty and I remember in December we had a big problem with them. They were giving up they had no shoes and their feet was frozen I mean we're talking about solid frozen and whenever their feet thaw their toes was basically gonna fall off the Chinese weren’t bad we took care of them pretty good one ones were bad were the North Koreans because of their training whats his name the head he had em brain washed real bad cant remember the first china man or Korean ahh jeez I don’t remember what his name was but he was the first one this boy they got now is about the fourth one its kinda like hes royalty you know what needs to be done is somebody ought to knock him in the head.
A.K: So you talked about training could you describe some of the training that you saw North Korean soldiers go through.
F.M: The Training?
F.M: Training for us?/
All: Yeah.
F.M: We had already been trained because when you first join, enlist, you go through about anywhere of 8 to 13 weeks of infantry training and If you go 8 weeks training as an infantry man and they give you a test [Unclear] you know quite a bit about math when you do they make you an artillery man or they put you in engineers. They didn’t wanna waste a guy that got a little brains.
L.H: How long were you in the North Korean War?
F.M: In Korea?
L.H: Yeah.
F.M: 1 year 1 month
A.K: You remember the Americans policy of containment. How did you feel towards that policy.
F.M: How its going on now?
A.K: Or just back then in North Korea
F.M: We didn’t really have a policy of containment we just had a policy to stop them dig in and wait for em and try to do as much damage to them as we could. Other than that .. you had to find some of these officers there maybe some lieutenant colonels or something you can find some of them guys they know a lot more about that containment stuff than I do.
A.K: Personally what was your view on communism and communist people?
F.M: I didn’t care much for it. I didn’t care at all for communists. Its, I think we oughta all be democratic. Do what you want just don’t do it completely the way you want to do it but do good. But this is a list, this the latest list that I’ve got of those fellas I think a lot of them can probably help you. You wanna look on their the dates back in the 1950s. Early 50's. That the ones you wanna talk to. Unless you wanna talk about Vietnam theirs guys in there from Vietnam or were there.
A.K: Did your officers, people in your platoon talk about their old lifestyle like where their from-
F.M:Not really their too busy and most the officers didn’t last very long. It was nothing to have your lieutenant come in today and few days later he was gone there was another lieutenant because he'd been shot up or something. Anyway I think these guys here you find some fellas give em a 7call and I think theirs quite a few of them that can help you. Whatever you want.
A.K: Yeah we'll look into it very well.
F.M: And see if you can find an officer like a lieutenant colonel or a full colonel. I don’t think there’s any generals on their anymore but if you can get lieutenant colonel that’s been there in Korea he could talk about containment and things that I don’t know anything about.
A.K: Okay so we're gonna, just a couple last questions. This is gonna be mostly post war so did you ever wonder after you left, the war wasn't over correct?
F.M: Yea, no it wasn't over. Had a few more years to go.
A.K: Yeah, did you ever wonder how people who enlisted or volunteered how their experience would be like did you think it was going similar to yours?
F.M: Everybody's is different. Some fellas go in there they don’t wanna talk about it. There’s other fellas that'll talk about it but it doesn’t interest them anymore. But if you find some of these fellas that have been goin to these reunions that’s the ones you want because they still up on and they can help you quite a bit like me I haven’t been to a reunion in five years probably, six I think.
L.H: Did you ever want to stay in North Korea or did you just want to leave. You know how you said that they called your name and they got you back to the states. Did you ever want to stay in North Korea.
F.M: Nooo I was glad to got outta there. Everyone.. as soon as they call your name you cant wait [Unclear] your clothes, leave everything, jump on the truck and your on your way. Go down to the center for evacuation.
A.K: So what was your experience like when you saw family again after the war.
F.M:The only one I had family was my dad. And like I told you before he really wasn’t that much of a dad to me. I have a half sister she was happy to see me.
A.K: Did you ever write to him during the war or keep contact with them.
F.M: I wrote to my step mother couple times because I was sending some money back we couldn't use American money we had to use what they called script it was a dollar would be like this and it would be blue and have one dollar on it. We couldn’t use American currency. Far as I was concerned I didn’t see any difference. Why couldn’t we.
A.K: Furthermore, when you finally got settled in after post war experience did you get anything such as like post traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, or anything bad-
F.M: Because I talk about it. You don’t keep it in. I know some guys that you couldn’t get them to say anything about it but they were always nervous and jumpy every guy been in the service, been in the war, talk about it! Get it off your chest! Its better. Don’t hold it in. So if you ever have to go just remember that. Its not hard to do that and now we’ve got ladies are going in the service. But back in those days all we had was what they called whacks. Older women most of them questionable about their appearance and all. They were just women who wanted to make some money and stay in the service.
A.K: So last two questions. The second to last one would be after a couple years when the war finished and everything and you [Unclear] like I said before did you think that before Vietnam that communism would continue and increase that around or you did [Unclear] one major [Unclear] communism side.
F.M: Well I really cant answer, I didn’t care for communism there weren’t much I could do about it and I never got up on that stool preaching people, we gotta get rid of these guys, no stay away from that. Go to these reunions and talk about it and you will always have a representative there who can go to congress and talk to the congress man and that'll help some. There’s nothing an individual can do. You have to work as a team get somebody that a pretty good person, can work with a congress man you can get things done in a slow way. I just hope we don’t have anymore – we don’t need war like I said nobody wins except the banks.
A.K: Do you feel that since you've talked about your experience that it was a lot easier for you to let it go and move on?
F.M: Sure. Lets talk about it. No matter what you had to do no matter how nasty and dirty and what it was like you live with it and when you’re talking about it just talk about it. Don’t hold it in its no good to do that. I think your batteries about gone.
A.K: We would like to thank you this interview is about to be over we thank you for your time [Unclear] it was really interesting I think like we had a lot of fun learning about this stuff. You know how everyone wants to learn about Vietnam we kinda wanted to do Korea and we got a good sense of what we needed to hear and finally I would like to thank you again for giving us time.
F.M: I don’t mind doing it this is about the third time I've talked to anybody about it. No body is really of interest in the Korea they wanna talk about Vietnam and that oskay with me. I used to have a large book on Korea war what you need to do is go on the internet there’s a lot of information there start with Pusan 1950 because the Korean war broke out I believe it was the 25th of June 1950. Go from there.